What a Lens can Do For You! And the Difference Between Manual & Automatic

There is so many wonderful people/photographers out there that take the time *almost daily sometimes* to give others tips, tutorials, useful links, etc...! I've learned and grown through many of these and wanted to take a minute to give a little back.

Today I got out my handsome son's old Thomas The Train stuff for my darling daughter to enjoy. Thomas was a huge part of his toddler years and I wanted to capture them playing together. I strive to always shoot on Manual with no flash.

Well this morning in the playroom we had both windows open (no overhead light) and I just couldn't quite get the Exposure right!

I had on my standard Lens that came with my Canon.

You'll notice that the Aperture only opens to f3.5 but only to 5.6 most of the time.

So with my Apreture as low as I could get it (5.6)

My ISO at 1600

(I hate hate hate going higher than 400 because of noise but nothing was working this morning!)

And my shutter speed was 1/50.

A good rule of thumb is to not take your shutter speed down lower than the focal length of your lens. The focal length on my lens is 55mm so I was actually a little low.

Confused by all this Shutter Speed/Aperture/ISO talk?

Go Here

Anywho, this is the best I was getting using no flash:

Noisy!

Dark!

BLAH!

THEN I decided to bust out my new Lens!

You'll notice you can open the Aperture to 1.8

However, the lens is at a fixed 50mm (no zooming) which is hard to get used to but with a $100 price tag it really can't be beat!

So with my Canon on Manual

Using No Flash

I took my Aperture down just a tad to 3.2

ISO still 1600 *Gahhh*

Here's what kinda yummy light I was working with

Still a little noisy for my taste but much much better overall!

No editing was done to either of these.

Please ignore her blank like stare and food stained mouth (hence the no editing)...

we've been sick around these parts.

And again with the same settings...colors are true to real life:

And just to give you an idea of what the photo

would look like shooting on Automatic with a flash:

YUCK!

Lesson Learned:

You don't have to spend fortunes on a lens to make it work for you.

Know the Exposure Triangle!

Love It!

Play with Settings!

~The Only Source of Knowledge Is Experience~

Albert Einstein